Lessons
Class Introduction
03:05 2On Camera vs Off Camera Flash
08:39 3Camera Based Settings
13:58 4Sync Settings
10:00 5Flash Based Settings
08:33 65 Step Plan For Using Flash
05:55 7Wireless Flash System
11:54 8Conquering The Master System
06:54Lesson Info
Flash Based Settings
Now that we've got the camera the sink modes and all that going for the camera let's now talk about the flashes and the flash modes let's talk about t t l t l b l and some of the other modes that maybe aren't as important these matter these matter to your photography so let's spend a little bit of time understanding the difference between a t t l and t t l b l so have included some screen shots here teo the focus of tl puts the emphasis of the exposure just on the subject so what the camera does is it says oh I see that you're focused at seven point eight feet away therefore the flashes going to put out seven point eight feet worth of light all right, so tt l you can think about using may be in a situation where maybe you're shooting a wedding and all you care about a shooting the people you don't really carry a care about the background light versus tt lbo tt lbo the beale actually stands for balance balanced so t mobile is balanced fill flash hear what the cameras trying to do is try...
ing to really balance the ambient with the foreground so maybe gives you a little bit longer exposure sometimes on pops a little bit less light for the four grand just to balance the two so what do I use? Well, honestly predominantly I used tp lbo it's where I spend most of my time not too long ago I shot a fundraiser for the northwest furniture bank it's a great organization and they asked me to shoot for their fundraiser so I use that night I used t t mobile the whole time and got great great results next is around when you're thinking through t t l b l e y I think about the exposure I talked about zero point zero your camera basically comes from the fact your flash comes from the factory and the exposure compensation is set for zero point zero and so as I showed earlier today zero point zero really means a medium brightness exposure middle brightness not every photo in the world needs to be middle brightness sometimes your person wears all white so if you're photographing a scene and let's see well this one that we did earlier the background it was all white well the camera sees that and goes oh I need to dial down the power of the flash to make it gray so sometimes we have to add power to make our photo look good and that's what we do with your called flash exposure compensation some people call it f e c some people call it f e v for flash exposure value whatever you're just increasing or decreasing that power so the cool thing about the nikon system and the truth of the matter is any flash system is so fast now to take a picture and look at it and go oops made a mistake and just both of us bump the power up or power down so get in the habit of taking a shot in taking a look in fact that's one of the ways to make flash photography more fun than scary aa lot of people take that first photo and go power and they look at it like oh I just put it away and go have some pizza but if you know that it's safe to just increase the power decreased power very quickly you can get some very good results let's talk about the next mode on your flash manual so manual flash mode manual is all manual like there's no technology other than just how much power is coming out the flash some people like to shoot manual I actually do shoot quite a bit of manual flash and I use manual flash any time I have a lot of people coming through my studio I just did ah ah but church directory and I had you know hundreds of people coming through the studio and everyone wears different color clothing you got caucasians you've got latinos you go african americans we got lots of skin tones and colors t t l would have been all over the map manual mode is the way to just dial it in and I can shoot for the next four days every flashes on one eighth power I get the same exposure every time so use manual mode any time you need consistency from shot to shot to shot all right a couple of the other most are a few of the other modes that you'll probably never use this shot here is of my beautiful daughter allison and it was a few years ago now but I was showing how to use the repeating flash mode on the back of the hiring nikon flashes there's an r p t so I showed right here rpt repeating flash you program in how many flashes like four in this case and what the frequency is so maybe one every quarter second and then the power so you have to program all thirty things in and then you say go to your subject in your subject moves around okay I learned that from her she's a very good teacher and then power power power power so the flash basically fires while the shutter is open so it's actually quite complicated it took me I don't even know ten twenty tries to get everything working because if she moves too fast she only gets three pulses of light if she moves too slow the she overlaps right in fact you can see the overlapping here on her clothes on her little skirt so it's ah it's a creative tool but for most of our photography you'll never use repeating flash next is too there are two more most I want to cover one is called auto flash this is auto aperture typically and I'm going to come back turn the camera here rotate this guy around auto flash right here on the front of your higher in nikon flash like u s p eight hundred your nine hundreds and your five thousands there is a little light sensor that's called the auto fire ist er and this is a carry over from like the nineteen seventies back in the old vivid tar to eighty three days those flashes head was called auto fire esther and auto means all of the flash exposure happens right here there's no like interaction with the camera so the flash sends out light and then when it reflects back that little sensor there says I have enough now and the auto fire esther cuts off power so auto flash it's old school some people still use it but I never do so you don't have to worry about auto flash and then the last one here is guide number the guide number setting is it's also old school like really old school like older than me and I'm not that old but whatever so we used to have to do this calculation and I've got it here on the screen the calculation was the distance of your subject needs to be the guide number divided by the aperture so let's say that my flashes a guide number of one hundred so I would go ok guy number one hundred got it now my aperture I'm at oh boy lis I'm f ten so one hundred divided by f ten is ten feet okay so you're ten feet away all right I think that's ten is a ten feet yeah it looks like well maybe a tape measure should get a tape measure out all right so that I could take my photo set up properly and then maybe you're using something like a five point six all right one hundred divided by f five six uh I have no idea what that this was at eighteen seventy feet I don't know so anyways you see why guy number has kind of fallen away it's a difficult flash miller to use if you ever wonder though how far away are subject should be the flash actually tells you right here says fifteen feet so at least nikon has been nice they don't require you to carry a calculator and a tape measure and all the time so you'll you'll never use guide number someone out there I know someone out there internet lines like I use it I'll use it well good for you I don't
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
James Stone
This class is an excellent primer on Nikon's Creative Lighting System. Mike does an excellent job simplifying what can seem like a complicated system. I enjoyed it and saved it to watch again as a refresher.
Fred Morton
So, here's the deal. If you can't get to a Mike Hagan course in person this is the best next thing. I have know Mike for 6 years and he never disappoints. I took this course through Nikonians about four years ago and found this to be not only a great review but a significant update from what I l learned in the previous class. Mike is one who never rests on his laurels and as a teacher he is constantly updating and improving his work. Speed lights are so much more complex then most people understand and Mike use his knowledge to take that complexity and reduce it to a set of clear and understandable methods. So glad to see that Creative Live has included him in their line up of instructors.
Marlon Ornek
Mike is a great easy to follow instructor who you can tell knows his subject. Thank you. A great course that I would recommend to anyone with Nikon gear.
Student Work
Related Classes
Lighting